The Issue That Refuses to Go Away - Rights versus Responsibilities

It goes to the heart of the trucker protest in Ottawa and elsewhere. The truckers accept no responsibility for the misery they're inflicting on those unfortunate enough to live anywhere near them. They assert their rights as sacrosanct, screw everyone else.

It's becoming a norm in many nations. Thomas Friedman laments the hold it has taken over America.

This pervasive claim that “I have my rights” but “I don’t have responsibilities” is unraveling our country today.

“We are losing what could be called our societal immunity,” argued Dov Seidman, founder of the How Institute for Society. “Societal immunity is the capacity for people to come together, do hard things and look out for one another in the face of existential threats, like a pandemic, or serious challenges to the cornerstones of their political and economic systems, like the legitimacy of elections or peaceful transfer of power.”

But societal immunity “is a function of trust,” added Seidman. (Disclosure: Seidman is a donor to my wife’s museum, Planet Word.) “When trust in institutions, leaders and each other is high, people — in a crisis — are more willing to sublimate their cherished rights and demonstrate their sense of shared responsibilities toward others, even others they disagree with on important issues and even if it means making sacrifices.”

When our trust in each other erodes, though, as is happening in America today, fewer people think they have responsibilities to the other — only rights that protect them from being told by the other what to do.

This new norm is a societal wasting disease.  By tolerating these miscreants we legitimize, if only in their eyes, their fight for freedoms without regard for the consequences to others,  rights without responsibilities. It's time our leaders showed a little spine.